Treat Your Code Like Uranium | Adam Cogan

Adam Cogan shares a striking story comparing two World War II factories—one ordinary, one handling uranium—and the surprising lesson that the uranium workers lived longer because they followed disciplined, risk-aware practices. He connects that idea to software teams: the best outcomes come from careful habits like automated tests, telemetry, pull requests, retrospectives, shared rules, and good tools. The message is simple: treat software delivery with the same respect as dangerous work, and you’ll reduce stress, avoid chaos, and get better results.

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Stop Using 👍 Wrong in Teams | Adam Cogan

A quick communication tip from Adam Cogan: don’t use 👍 as a catch-all response when someone assigns you a task in Teams, Slack, or Google Chat. In the example Adam gives, if a task will take about five minutes, a thumbs up is too ambiguous because it does not clearly say whether you’ve read it, agree with it, are doing it now, or will do it later. Instead, use 👍 for agreement, 👀 to show you’ve seen the task and are actively working on it, and then replace 👀 with ✅ once the task is done. It is a small change, but it removes ambiguity and cuts down unnecessary follow-up messages.

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